Description

For more news and videos visit ➡ ‪http://english.ntdtv.com‬
Follow us on Twitter ➡ ‪http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision‬
Add us on Facebook ➡ ‪http://on.fb.me/s5KV2C
New revelations are casting light on Internet search giant Google's withdrawal from China in 2010. According to what an unnamed source with knowledge of the situation told The Epoch Times that Google was the victim of a high-level bid for control of the Chinese regime.
In 2010, Google withdrew its business from China after it was the victim of a coordinated cyber attack that hacked into the email accounts of dozens of Chinese human rights activists. Those attacks originated in China.
According to a US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks, then US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman wrote that an informant said the cyber attacks on Google were orchestrated by a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest level of leadership in the Chinese regime. The leaked cable said that it was (quote), "one-hundred percent" political in nature.
Now, an unnamed source of The Epoch Times is saying the Politburo Committee member was Zhou Yongkang. With the aid of recently disgraced Chongqing mayor Bo Xilai, he orchestrated the downfall of Google.
Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai are protégées of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang is the head of a political faction that opposes current Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
Google's popularity in China made it very unpopular with another Chinese search engine, Baidu. So in March 2009, Bo Xilai approached Baidu's chairman at the Honglou Hotel in Chongqing. It was agreed that in exchange for lifting censorship of articles criticizing Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and Bo's political rival and Chinese Vice President Xi Jingping, Google would be eliminated as a competitor.
Google was first attacked on grounds that it was spreading pornography. On June 18, 2009, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, an organization with close ties to Baidu, published an article condemning Google for spreading indecent and pornographic content from outside China. The state-run Xinhua News Agency echoed those accusations. That same afternoon, Zhou Yongkang arranged for a public announcement of punishments leveled at Google.
In the end, though, the accusations just made Google even more popular. Again, in the leaked US Embassy cable, Huntsman writes that his informant told him, "Baidu looked like a boring sate-owned enterprise while Google seems very attractive, like the forbidden fruit."
So in early October 2009, Bo Xilai relayed a message to Baidu's chairman claiming (quote), "I have a way. Google will definitely withdraw from China."
Google never did reveal if the cyber attacks were launched by the Chinese regime, but Google engineers did trace them back to Chinese state agencies.
After Google left China, Baidu became the largest search engine in China. Today, although negative information is blocked on Baidu searches for Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao and Xi Jingping, that's only searches done in Chinese. Spelling their names in pinyin reveals articles such as, "Hu Jintao's Son Terribly Corrupt, Jiang Zemin Wants to Get to the Bottom Of It," and "Xi Jinping is a Lecher, Plays With Women in Zhejiang Behind his Second Wife's Back," and so on.
But after Bo Xilai's ousting following scandal, and rumors of Zhou Yongkang being put under house arrest, negative information on them, in particular their connection to crimes against humanity and the persecution of Falun Gong, were at least temporarily uncensored.